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Fitness Measurements
I see a lot of misunderstandings about what information is
necessary for your training purposes. Before I address this topic, I
want to make sure you know that I am not some ignorant old coach who
is stuck in obsolete ways.
Therefore, I will list my credentials concerning this topic because
this page will fly in the face of all you are being taught by the
media and others. This is not for bragging but so that you know that
I know what I am talking about and that my decisions and perspective
on this matter are based on education and knowledge.
In college, I studied chemistry, biology, physiology, anatomy, and
kinesiology along with other sciences. I have stood in laboratories
and taken VO2 Max before most of you were born. I have had to do all
types of tests and worked with PhD's in exercise physiology taking
tests and doing studies. I have been invited to assist PhD's in
doing special studies.
Scientifically, I am very well trained and enjoy studying and
reading about science. I must admit that I am a bit of a nerd in
that I have done such things as take a course on Solar Engineering
and read such things as books on physics, mathematics, and astronomy
for fun.
One of the most important courses I took in college was a course
called Tests and Measurements. This course taught me how to custom
design tests to measure anything I needed or wanted to measure in
the way of athletic potential and improvement. This was an
incredibly valuable course for a coach. The first thing we had to
learn was the importance and meaning of the different types of
information you can obtain from tests. We learned what different
information means and what it does not mean. We learned what
information really is important and that which is not important.
Basically, we learned the relevance of different types of
information.
Next, we had to learn how to determine what information a particular
test will and will not provide. I use this information when studying
race courses, training courses, and race formatting. I have used it
to custom design training programs knowing what the programs will
and will not develop in the body.
This course was very important in understanding the relevance of the
different forms of information you get from lab tests. It also
taught me what information I need to collect as a coach, how to use
it, and what it means and doesn't mean.
In this essay, I am going to share that information with you.
Information
I am going to break this essay down into three basic parts. This
will be information you get from a Physiology lab, information you
get from personal monitoring devices, and the information that you
really need to collect and how to collect it.
Physiology Lab Information
Before I even began studying sports sciences in college, I had a
coach, Gene Rypka, PhD, who gave me some information that helped me
to understand the true importance of physiology lab information.
Dr. Rypka was a research scientist at the Lovelace Clinic and Sandia
Labs in Albuquerque, NM. These scientists are among the best in the
world. He had two PhD's, several Masters degrees, and at least four
Bachelor's degrees. Dr. Rypka was involved in biological research at
Lovelace Clinic and regularly assisted in the Physiology Lab where
they did research for organizations such as NASA. He was also my
first cycling coach.
As I began studying sports sciences, Dr. Rypka wanted to make sure
that I kept this information in a proper perspective and taught me
the true significance of this information. He taught me that the
physiology information that is often gathered about athletes if
often meaningless.
He told me that, ?The greatest potential athlete in the world is
probably a book worm in the back of some library who doesn't care
about sports."
Dr. Rypka stressed to me that the most significant part of an
athlete is his mind and not his body. He told me about the person
they had done research on at Lovelace who held the record for the
lowest resting heart rate in the world at that time of only 26 beats
per minute. He was a European bike racer whom I had never heard of
before or since. He never won worlds, an Olympic medal, or the Tour
de France. He was racing at the time of Eddy Merckx and I never
heard of him beating Eddy or even being a serious contender. He was
so insignificant as an athlete that I can't even remember his name.
But according to what Exercise Physiologists and the media teach
you, he should have been the greatest athlete in the world.
Obviously, they were wrong.
A much greater athlete was Lenard Nitz whom the Exercise
Physiologist at the Olympic Training Center said should not have
even been racing bicycles and should have been playing chess.
Obviously, they were wrong again. Over the last 40 years of sports,
I have seen them and their lab information be wrong dozens of times.
But these scientists and the media don't like to tell you about all
the times they were wrong.
What does VO2 Max mean to me as a coach when I am looking for
champions or programming athletes? Nothing; absolutely nothing.
I have seen too many athletes with really great lab results who
couldn't ride their way out of a down hill parking lot with a tail
wind and a good push. I have seen many more athletes who didn't have
such great lab results kick those riders? butts. There have been
many world and Olympic champions in all sports who have had resting
heart rates of 50 beats per minute or higher. I have known many
losers who had resting heart rates of less than 40 beats per minute.
I have seen too many aspiring athletes go to a lab, get lousy
results, be told they should not be in sports, and never recover
from the depressing news. It is a huge mental obstacle to train and
compete against having such "experts" tell you that you should be
knitting instead of competing in sports. Most people cannot over
come such a huge mental obstacle. Because of this, I never took any
of my athletes to an Exercise Physiology lab or permitted them to go
to one.
I have learned that the most important step toward becoming a
champion is to know that you can be one and not what some PhD tells
you. How can you possibly believe in yourself as a potential
champion if one of these "experts" convinces you that you can't be
one?
If I am wrong about this, why do we still have athletic events
instead of doing lab tests on everyone and handing out the trophies
and prizes based on those lab results?
Personal Information Devices
I recently had a rider ask me when I was going to start using the
wattage system for gathering information and regularly have riders
ask me about using heart rate monitors for information gathering.
The truth is that I will never use either of those devices. The
information they provide is not relevant to what I need to know in
programming you.
For example, the wattage system tells you how much energy you are
expending on a given ride. If you take total wattage expenditure for
the entire ride, it means nothing to me because it doesn't tell me
what you did on your ride and how you expended that energy. Did you
do sprints, intervals, or power work? It doesn't tell me whether you
got a really high-energy consumption from wind, hills, or sprints.
Most importantly, wattage output doesn't tell me what you will do in
a race. Comparing your wattage output to that of your competition
(as if they would tell you anyway) can't tell you how well you will
do in relation to that competition.
A larger rider will have a higher wattage output at a slower speed
because it will require more energy to move his mass at the higher
rate of speed and he will have more wind resistance. Therefore, how
could I possibly tell if you can beat him or will he beat you? How
could I tell if you are going fast enough, working out right, or
anything else about your racing and training?
As a professionally trained and experienced coach, it means nothing
to me.
The best thing I have found heart rate monitors to be useful for is
to teach a few athletes how hard is hard enough in their training.
But you can do the same thing without buying an expensive piece of
equipment by just putting them into a really fast race.
The only concern I have about your heart rate is to see if your
resting heart rate goes up and stays high for three or more days.
This is normally a good indicator of overtraining but can also mean
that you are stressed out, taking a medication or drug, or any
number of other problems. It has to be used with common sense. When
your resting heart rate goes up, you check your training log to see
if it is overtraining or something else.
If you think I am wrong, the next time you go to a bike race, I want
you to watch all the people who are using all these expensive
measuring devices and the information they provide losing races. I
guess they really don't help these athletes as much as the media and
manufacturers tell you, do they? Think about it.
If you're looking to un-complicate your training and simply get
faster and stronger with a training program that works - without
depending on the latest fad, check out my book
A Better Way To Train.
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